Are you looking for ways to treat sports injuries?
Sports injuries are common among athletes. Bicycling, basketball, and football are the top three sports with the most number of injured people.
Bicycle accounted for 425,000 injuries. Basketball comes at a close second with 404,000, while football had 292,000.
If you’re into sports, consider a sports injury massage as a part of your training and recovery. It can help heal injuries faster and can even prevent them from happening. Read more:
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What is a Sports Injury Massage?
A sports injury massage targets specific injuries by focusing on the muscles, ligaments, and tendons around it. It promotes healing and improves mobility, allowing the injury to heal faster.
It can help with a wide range of issues – from common sprains to the most debilitating sports injuries. You can get a massage for ankle sprains, hamstring tears, tennis elbow, and more.
A sports injury massage also acts as a preventive measure against injuries. It’s what made it become an integral part of an athlete’s training regimen. View here for more information about preventing injuries.
Benefits of Sports Injury Massage
Now you know how sports injury massage works. It’s time to learn about its benefits. Here are some ways a massage treatment can help your athletic career.
Faster Recovery
As we said above, massage treatments help you recover faster from many types of sports injuries. Massages influence the excretion of fluids like phosphorus, sulfur, and nitrogen. These are important in repairing tissues.
A massage also improves circulation. The increased blood flow also promotes the interchange of nutrients and oxygen between the blood and tissue cells. As a result, the body gets better at recovering.
It can help eliminate lactic acid and carbonic acid build-up. These are waste products from exercising.
A massage can help shorten the recovery time by getting rid of toxic debris faster. Stretching tight tissues also breaks down adhesions. It helps reduce inflammation.
Pain Reduction
Therapeutic massage relieves pain in several ways. It’s through relaxing your muscles, tendons, and joints. It’s also effective in stimulating competing nerve fibers to obstruct pain signals traveling to and from the brain.
The increase of blood flow and lymph in the body decreases your pain levels. It helps with the pain from cramps and spasms as well. Remember, these are common sports injuries requiring your utmost attention.
Massages also help treat delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS). It refers to the pain after several hours of exercising.
Some types of massage target specific pain-causing muscle tissues. For example, trigger point therapy puts isolated pressure on the trigger point.
Sports massages attempt to alleviate the pain through several cycles of press and release. It then relieves the knots and relaxes the right muscle groups.
When experiencing chronic pain, regular massage treatments can help you achieve relief. It must be the right type of massage since it might worsen otherwise.
Improved Flexibility
A sports injury massage doesn’t only help with injuries. It can also prevent them by improving your joint flexibility.
When joints are flexible, you are freer to do a full range of movement. It ensures they aren’t compromised. At the same time, having enough flexibility means your joints are strong enough to support the muscles.
A massage also helps with tissue elasticity. Stretching the muscles warms them up in both the superficial and deeper tissue layers. The increase in temperature helps relax and loosen the muscles, improving their elasticity.
It happens because the massage breaks down and realigns collagen fibers. These are fibrous tissues for repairing damaged tissues.
However, they’re laid down in a haphazard position over the muscles. It results in decreased flexibility and movement.
The rise in temperature combined with the strokes of a massage causes these fibers to soften. It breaks the cross-links, allowing the therapist to realign them using various techniques. Aligning them with the body’s natural fibers increases flexibility.
Having flexible muscles can also prevent pain. It can prevent muscle tightness and tension, increasing movement and decreasing pain.
Improved Athletic Performance
With improved flexibility comes better athletic performance. It enables the athlete to move the right way without straining muscles and joints. The increase in tissue elasticity helps individuals stretch the muscles to their fullest potential, increasing the range of motion.
Muscle fatigue is also a common issue among athletes. When they do intense workouts or undergo new training regimens, their muscles must keep up.
As a result of the muscles working harder, the level of waste products also increases. As mentioned earlier, lactic and carbonic acid builds up in the muscles. These can cause stiffness, soreness, and even tissue damage.
With a massage, you can get rid of these toxic products faster. You can continue performing at your peak.
Improved Mental Health
Athletes also need to be in a good mental condition to perform well in their activities. Achieving success in competitive sports requires intense mental concentration. After all, a healthy mind leads to a healthy body.
A sports massage can help in several ways. It helps the release of endorphins, boosting your sense of well-being. These chemicals reduce stress, anxiety, and even depression.
It also affects your body’s oxygen consumption, cortisol levels, and blood pressure. A massage keeps them low, leading to better mental health. Athletes then have a better mental capacity to deal with the stresses of rigorous schedules and competition.
Explore Sports Massage Treatments Today
A sports injury massage helps in a lot of beneficial ways, even to non-athletes. Regular treatments are the key to having a better-equipped body for more intense exercises.
However, opting for a massage is only the first step. You must also find a reputable provider. It means doing your homework and researching the best sports massage businesses in your area.
Did you find this guide informative? Consider read our other posts and learn more ways to improve your lifestyle now.
Read Also: How Occupational Therapy Can Improve Your Life After Injury